


The World Belongs to Us

by queeshmael



Category: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Genre: Canon Gay Relationship, M/M, Post-Book, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 11:18:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2107815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queeshmael/pseuds/queeshmael
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ari and Dante go on a road trip, and Ari does some self-reflecting.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World Belongs to Us

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [lonelywalker](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lonelywalker/pseuds/lonelywalker) for being an awesome beta!

“Let’s take a trip,” Dante said one morning in the pool, his arms crossed and propped on the edge. “A road trip.”

 _Well, why not?_ I thought. I had my truck. That’s pretty much all you need for a road trip.

“Where do you want to go?” I asked, hands gripping the edge, legs kicking long, slow strokes. Dante reached down into the water and touched my forearm.

“I want to see your house in Tucson. And then I want you to meet my grandparents.”

I gulped. “Your grandparents in LA? You sure?” Dante meeting my sisters and me meeting his grandparents were very different. Grandparents were--old. And old meant old fashioned. Then again, young people aren’t very friendly to people who are different from them either. Maybe I shouldn’t worry.

Dante smiled, and I swallowed again, but for a different reason. I still thought his smile was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. More beautiful than the stars in the desert, far away from all the light pollution of El Paso.

“Of course I’m sure! They’ll love you, Ari. You speak Spanish.”

“You speak Spanish too.”

“You speak Spanish _well_. Come on! It’ll be fun. We can go swimming in the ocean!” I realized I hadn’t said yes yet, though I’d been thinking it. 

Dante squeezed my forearm, leaned close, and whispered, “We’d have your house all to ourselves.” I pinched his arm, causing him to let out a yelp. But I smiled too.

“We have to ask our parents first,” I said finally. 

****

The parents said yes, as well as “Be careful,” “Pack plenty of snacks,” “Stop for gas often,” and “Call us when you get to Tucson and East LA.”

We took off west on 1-10, through the desert toward Tucson and Aunt Ophelia's old house. The drive was four and a half hours, so we only had to stop once for gas. I wanted to drive the whole time, since it was short and it was my truck, but Dante insisted on driving just for a little while. It's hard to say no to Dante--he is very persuasive.

So I let Dante drive for the last hour, and we parked in front of Aunt Ophelia's house. No, _my house_. I had to get used to calling it my house. It was mine, after all. It was so weird to have a house. I was eighteen years old, going to college in the fall in my hometown. And I had a house four hours away from where I lived. Weird.

Dante leapt from the truck and trotted up to the front door, inspecting the overgrown hedges. He'd be looking for hedge trimmers as soon as we were inside and settled. That was Dante for you--always willing to help out. The stuccoed rancher was brown and cream on the outside. It was nice inside--wood floors, some of the walls painted white and some peach, bright green cabinets in the kitchen. The area rugs were soft under our feet. The wall hangings and decorative plates and vases on the shelves reminded me of Aunt Ophelia. It was strange to think of them still here, while she was gone.

The house only had one bedroom, where we left our bags. We had no need of the sofa bed, where I’d slept when I was a kid. Dante flopped down onto the bed, yanking me down on top of him, a huge grin on his face. He put his hand under my chin and pulled my face towards his and kissed me.

"I thought you'd be out trimming those hedges by now," I finally said, Dante still smiling.

"Oh yeah, send me out to trim the hedges. Make me feel more Mexican."

I punched him lightly in the arm. "And we have to go to the grocery store and get some food, if we're going to be here for a few days."

"I still can't get over the fact that we get to sleep in a _queen-sized bed_ in a house _all by ourselves_ for _days_." He paused for a moment, looked out the bedroom window, then back at me with a thoughtful gaze. "Is this what the rest of our life will be like? After college?"

“Sure,” I said. “All adults have queen-sized beds.”

Dante reached up and ruffled my hair, still long since I grew it last summer. "That's not what I meant and you know it. I meant, after college, do you want to sleep in a queen-sized bed with me all the time?"

"Of course," I said. Dante had a way of asking these questions about us that put me at ease. They were always phrased as "Do you want to do this, Ari?" like he was constantly asking for my permission. He already had my permission, for everything, but it was nice that he kept checking in. I'm sure most people, after overhearing our conversation, would have said, "That's ridiculous! You're so young! Anything could happen in college, after college--how do you know you'll still be together?" I guess I don't know. The future is perhaps the biggest mystery the universe has to offer. But I _wanted_ to be, which was what Dante asked. Dante and I had already been through a lot. I couldn't imagine my universe without him. Actually I could, because that had happened when he went away to Chicago, and I didn't want it to happen again.

I sank down onto the bed, lying on my side so I could face Dante, who was also lying on his side. I tugged on the bottom of his t-shirt, pulling him closer to me, and I kissed him.

I used to think you could discover the secrets of the universe by holding someone's hand. I still kind of think that, but that was before I had kissed Dante. Kissing Dante was different than kissing Ileana. Not because Dante was a boy and Ileana was a girl--after all, lips are pretty much the same no matter if they belong to a boy or a girl. No, kissing Dante was different because I love him. Whenever I would kiss Dante, it felt like fireworks were going off underneath my skin. My whole body tingled. My heart started pounding and I breathed faster. And I never wanted him to stop touching me, or to move further away. His closeness was what I liked best. Kissing felt nice, but it felt even better when you love the person. 

And to think, there was a time in my life when I tried to tell myself that kissing Dante Quintana didn't work for me.

A lot has happened in a year. Now, not only have I kissed Dante, but I've had sex with him too. Lots of different kinds of sex. At first, I was kind of afraid, but mostly because I was confused. I mean, what do two guys even do in bed together? Well okay, I could figure that one out on my own. But I mean, how does it work? I didn't really understand how any of it was supposed to feel good. I'd touched myself in the shower before, and it was okay. But putting your dick in someone's ass? I just didn't get it.

That doesn't mean that I didn't want to have sex with Dante. I definitely did. I was just confused about the mechanics of it all. I loved when we spent hours making out in the bed of my truck, bodies pressed against one another. I loved feeling him get hard against me and then stroking that hardness, and then taking that hardness into my mouth, and eventually feeling that hardness inside of me. And I loved when Dante did all of these things to me. It just took a while for me to love myself enough and be comfortable enough with my body to realize, wow, Dante really wanted me.

He wanted me right now, that was for sure. His hands were snaking up inside of my t-shirt and over my abs--having a boyfriend is all the more incentive to work out--and he was kissing me harder, biting the bottom of my lip in the way that made me moan. And I wanted him too, because I was pushing my hips into his and squeezing his ass in the way that I knew would make him shiver. 

I always wanted Dante.

The hedge trimming, grocery shopping, and inevitable dusting of this uninhabited house would have to wait.

****

Eventually we really did dust the entire house, find some hedge trimmers in the sun room and clean up the yard, and bought some food for us to live on for the next few days. There wasn't much to do in Tucson; Dante and I cooked quesadillas for ourselves and read and drove around in the desert. We found a local pool and went swimming. And yeah, okay, we had a lot of sex.

I met with Aunt Ophelia's friend who wanted to buy the house. I told her that I still wasn't sure if I wanted to sell it, but then again, what was I going to do with a house in Tucson? I didn't even live there. At least if I sold the house I'd have some money to save, for life after college. Or just life in general.

Living in the house that my aunt had shared with her partner definitely got me thinking, about what the future would be like, about having a house with Dante. It would be nice, but the future was still really far away. I had to get through college first.

After a few days had passed by, we locked my house, climbed into my truck, and made the seven and a half hour drive to East LA. I was still really nervous about meeting Dante's grandparents. Sure, Dante had met my sisters--my mom insisted on having him over for their visit. And it had been fine--a few quizzical looks towards mom and then back to Dante and me, a few whispered kitchen conversations, and then nothing. Nothing was said out loud to me. Typical of my sisters. I wonder if they still thought I was "born too late." I wonder if meeting Dante made me grow up in that moment, right before their eyes.

I let Dante drive more on the way to California, through even more desert. I don't think I will ever get tired of the desert.The emptiness is filled with its own unique kind of beauty, which makes it not really that empty at all. It will always be special to me, thanks to Dante. Being with Dante in a desert is the most special of all. 

After some excellent map-reading by Dante, we managed to find his grandparents’ house, just in time for dinner. Dante had called them from Tucson to let them know we were on our way, and they were waiting for us with a table groaning with home-cooked food. 

"This is Ari!" Dante said, in his school-taught Spanish. It had improved since I'd met him; occasionally he would insist that we only speak in Spanish for the entire day so he could practice. "He speaks Spanish--really!"

"You speak Spanish?" Dante's abuela said, eyes wide and eager. Her accent was different from my parents', but I could still understand her okay. I assured her that yes, Dante had told the truth, and Dante's abuela began eagerly chattering with me in the only language they knew while scooping us heaping plates of food, Dante's abuelo occasionally interjecting. That food was delicious--you could tell they owned a restaurant. Their house was small, and old--it only had one bedroom, so Dante and I would have to sleep in the living room, one of us on the couch, and one on the floor.

I noticed that Dante had just said, "This is Ari." Not "This is my friend Ari," or "This is my boyfriend Ari." Just, "This is Ari," leaving them to make whatever assumptions they wanted--or not make them at all. I didn't know what he had said to them before, or what Dante's dad had told his parents. I didn't ask. I just smiled and spoke as much Spanish as I could, and that seemed to make them happy. _Try to be as Mexican as possible,_ I thought. But really--what did I know about Mexico?

Dante and I went on walks around East LA, and some of the older boys would glare at us if Dante walked too close to me. I glared right back and clenched my fist. This wasn't being Mexican--this was life just like it was in El Paso. This was just being me. I guess they were the same, being Mexican and being me. Being Mexican and being gay and being me. All the same thing.

What made Dante feel like he was less Mexican? Because he didn't speak Spanish as well as I did? Maybe there were different ways of being Mexican, and no one was right and no one was wrong. You were Mexican if you wanted to be, no matter what language you spoke or what food you ate. Dante's parents were Mexican while being professors, and Dante's grandparents were Mexican when speaking only Spanish and eating Mexican food and living in East LA owning a Mexican restaurant. And Dante and I, we were Mexican too, in our own way. The only thing you really needed was parents or grandparents that were Mexican. Family. Being Mexican was all about family.

I guess being gay is kind of the same thing--as long as you liked at least one guy, being gay was whatever you wanted it to be. Dante would read books about places like New York City and San Francisco, places where men dressed up like women and men had lots of sex with other men and some of them--well lots of them, really--were dying because of it. I love Dante, and I love having sex with Dante, and Dante is a guy, so I guess that makes me gay. But I don't want to have sex with anyone else, no matter what body parts they have. And I don't want to dress up as a woman. Does that make me less gay? Does it even matter?

So many secrets of the universe. How will I ever discover them all?

I thought of all of these things during our visit, when we helped Dante's grandparents plant tomatoes and visited their restaurant and drove to the beach and swam in the ocean, sharing salty kisses and splashing each other in the surf. I thought of all of these things on our drive home, stopping back at my house in Tucson for the night. I thought of all of these things as I drove, the road stretched out endlessly in front of me, the road that lead back to my home and to the roots of all of the things that I was. I thought of these things as I sat in the passenger seat and watched Dante drive my truck, smiling over at me, eyes darting to me and then back to the road ahead. 

I don't know if I will ever discover all of the secrets of the universe, but now I had someone to help me. I reached out and touched his thigh as he looked ahead to the long stretch of future, waiting for us. Waiting for me.

Who am I? I am Aristotle Mendoza, and I am not afraid. I am not afraid to be me.


End file.
